What do you do when you get a bad vinyl record pressing?

We didn't notice bad pressings as much in the '80's and '90's because we all had processors. We prided ourselves on getting the music to sound as good as we could make it sound with all of the levers on the equalizer. I also had a dbx 3bx III which totally helped the sonics. 

Then the industry said there was too much noise from those processors and the most pure way to listen was to have no processors or tone controls or balance controls...  

@tablejockey +1. I'll take a chance on the UK. Generally I've been very satisfied with the UK presses. 

@mikelavigne, I concur with your digitally sourced pressings paragraph. I don't seek them out but in several cases I've crossed that line in search for the best sounding. The last two I recall are Steven Wilson remixes of Aqualung and Songs From The Big Chair. I like my original green label Aqualung and it doesn't fall into the bad pressing category but after I heard the Wilson remix I had to have it.

I do like the classical genre and have maybe 20 albums in the discography. I find that I don't listen to them very much. I didn't grow up listening to the genre. I suspect that if I did or truly loved the genre when I first heard it, I would have a stronger emotional bond that would help me to reach for the albums. I prefer listening to classical on NPR because of the DJ's information and I don't have to flip the record.

@lewn, @tablejockey, @kennyc +1

Yes! donating a record gives you a great feeling. Seeing the enjoyment on a person’s face is priceless when they find out you are giving them the album and don’t want anything for it. Donating to a vinyl store is also very cool, awesome suggestion!

I had the chance to test my hypothesis. Would the Cult Love Canadian pressing sound better on a vintage rig than on my high end rig? 

I hooked my newly refurbished Harman Kardon 930 Twin Powered receiver to a buddy’s Technics SL-2100 / Audio-Technica cartridge and his bookshelf speakers of which I forget the brand. It was a generic brand sounding name. They had a tweeter, 5" grey shinny plastic woofer and were front ported.

We were both really blown away with the sonics! All of the tone controls were set to neutral. The bass was there! Heavy, appropriate, what I remember the album sounding like. The only questionable thing I noticed was that the volume knob was at 50%. It was a nice listening level, not too loud. Sure enough, my buddy confirmed my suspicion that his speakers were 4 ohm.

Tomorrow night I’ll finally have the chance to put the new HK930 in my vintage rig! I also have an Audio-Techica cartridge on the AKAI linear tracking tt. I suspect I’ll get a little more volume from the Infinity RS4b speakers since they’re rated 8 to 4 ohms in the specs.

I did pull the trigger on a UK pressing that tablejocky recommended. It would be nice to get a pressing that sounds KILLER on the main rig. We’ll see when it arrives? Worst case scenario is a shoot out of Canadian vs UK on the vintage rig. 

@tablejockey, your inclination also occurred to me as well. Other records do sound great but there's no harm in checking tonearm/cartridge set up again. I'll do that when I get back to the main rig. Right now I'm just in heaven with the vintage rig! Listening to Love again as I type this. The latest thing I've done this morning is adding the Bellari phono stage in the chain to compare to the HK internal phono stage.